Many drugs and medications currently prescribed by physicians require periodic administration at specified times. If the patient errs and repeats the dosage too frequently, an overdose may result. Similarly, if the patient should fail to administer the medication at the proper time intervals, the concentration of medicine in the patient's body may become too low.
Yet other drugs and medications are to be taken by a patient only when one or more specific symptons appear. These medications are hereinafter referred to as unscheduled medications. Again, the dosage for such symptomatic treatment cannot be repeated too frequently or an overdose may occur.
Therefore, certain time keeping responsibilities are clearly imposed when taking a medication. This time keeping responsibility falls of necessity upon either the patient or those who care for him. With regard to the latter, the problems are aggravated if more than one person cares for the patient, such as in semi-independent, family or institutional settings. Because of this, correct dosage administration has become one of the major responsibilities of various health care personnel. The multiple attendants must accurately communicate with one another or confusion may result as to when medicaton should again be administered. This situation may lead to under or over dosage of the medication.
Perhaps most commonly, the patient will note the current time on a watch or other standard time keeping device. On the basis of a physician's instructions regarding the minimum and maximum safe intervals between doses of medication, and on the basis of the total amount of medication to be administered over a possibly extended period of time, the patient then calculates the time when the next medication should be taken and commits the calculated time to memory. When the latter time arrives, the patient readministers the medication and repeats the process.
A number of disadvantages become apparent in this prior art method. For instance, the patient or caretaker may not correctly remember the appropriate time, or the individual may be otherwise distracted at the pre-determined time and fail to administer the medication. These problems become particularly acute with patients whose mental or physical conditions make them less capable of reliably discharging such actions, or, as mentioned above, where a number of persons are responsible for the patient.
Other suggested solutions to this problem are found in the prior art. A number of devices are designed to either minimize the mental calculation involved and/or to operate as reminder devices. Such a device may comprise a small pill case having a timer and alarm built into it such that when the alarm sounds, the patient will be alerted and hopefully act in accordance with the instructions provided by the physician's prescription.
Typically, these devices act only as simple alarm clocks that include the sometimes convenient feature of positioning the medication proximal to the clock. Other than sounding an alarm at the designated time, however, no provisions are made to ensure or urge compliance with the medication schedule. The user can simply shut off the alarm and never take any further steps towards administering the medication, either through intentional or unintentional neglect, thereby risking an underdose condition. Further, if the user does take the medication on schedule, he may still neglect to restart the timing function, and thereby risk either an overdose or an underdose condition.
Another problem can arise where a number of alarm set times are provided or where a pre-set time interval is provided that begins anew with the sounding of an alarm. In these cases, where a patient neglects to take his medication for some time following the designated time, an overdose condition can arise if the next scheduled alarm occurs too soon after the actual administration of the medication.
Finally, and perhaps most fundamental when viewed from the perspective of those who are charged with monitoring the progress of the patient in question, the prior art devices do little to encourage or monitor compliance with the prescribed medication regiment. When a patient returns to a physician, the physician must essentially trust the patient's word or memory with respect to his record of compliance. Because of this, some physicians may avoid prescribing certain medications for particular patients that might be more effective than the medications actually prescribed, but for which the physician must be fairly certain that compliance will be met.
In an earlier issued U.S. patent (U.S. Pat. No. 4,361,408), I disclose a timer and alarm apparatus useful for the periodic dispensation of medicine. This device included a pressure sensitive switch that could be operably connected to a medication container. Upon squeezing the pressure sensitive switch when opening the container, the switch would signal the alarm mechanism to terminate sounding the alarm. In other words, an act that would normally indicate compliance with the medication schedule also caused the alarm to cease.
In another earlier filed U.S. patent application (Ser. No. 421, 681), I disclose another timer and alarm apparatus useful for the periodic dispensation of medicine. This device included a timing and alarm mechanism that could be used with either integral or non-integral medication compartments. The device further included a magnetically-responsive switch that sensed the opening of the integral or non-integral medication compartment. This sensing was utilized to reinitiate the timing function.
The prior art lacks a medical timer mechanism that includes a time of day clock, that would be responsive to the dispensation of medication and/or parameters that evidence dispensation of medicine, that would measure elapsed time between dispensations of medicine and that would further operate to alert the user to check the measured elapsed time when that action may be medically necessary, that would provide for the entry of alarm times either by designation of a plurality of times of day or by setting a time interval between dosages, that would allow a minimum safe interval between dosages to be set such that the apparatus would signal user not to take medication during this period of time, that would indicate a specific predose interval during which it may be safe for the user to administer medication even though the scheduled administration time had not yet arrived, that would provide for intervals between dosages of more than twenty-four hours to accommodate a variety of medications that necessitate such a schedule, and that would monitor, record and communicate the degree to which the user has complied with the medication schedule and that would provide some useful indicia of that record of compliance.
The prior art also lacks a useful medical timer device that would operate to provide certain of the above desirable attributes without necessarily providing all.